EDITORS:
From July 21 to July 23, Professor Steve Palumbi will
be at the R. B. Gump South Pacific Research Station
in Moorea, French Polynesia, which is in the same
time zone as Hawaii. He can be reached by phone at
011-689-56-13-74 or 011-689-56-42-69; or by e-mail at
ndavies@moorea.berkeley.edu
to arrange a phone interview. On July 24, he returns
to California and will be available at (831) 655-6210
or spalumbi@stanford.edu
. Photos of humpback whales and Professor Palumbi are
available at http://newsphotos.stanford.edu
(slug: Whales). A QuickTime movie can be
viewed at the following hidden, embargoed site: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/august6/whales_video-86.html
. Please note that this website location should not
be shared with others. Roman and Palumbis
study, Whales Before Whaling in the North
Atlantic, appears in the July 25 issue of Science
magazine. A copy of the embargoed study can be
obtained from the AAAS Office of Public Programs in
Washington, D.C., at (202) 326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org
.

BROADCASTERS: A videotaped interview
with Professor Palumbi and footage of humpback whales
are available on Betacam or MiniDV formats. For a
copy, contact Mark Shwartz at the Stanford News
Service.

Scientists
have vastly underestimated the number of humpbacks
and other great whales that inhabited the North
Atlantic Ocean before the advent of whaling,
according to geneticists from Stanford and Harvard
Universities. Their findings, published in the
journal Science, could represent a major
setback for countries that advocate lifting a 17-year
moratorium on commercial whaling established by the
London-based International Whaling Commission (IWC).

"The
IWC is the main organization that regulates whaling,
and its policies allow for the resumption of
commercial hunting when populations reach a little
more than half of their historic numbers," said
Stephen R. Palumbi, a professor of biological
sciences at Stanford and co-author of the July 25 Science
study. The problem, he noted, is that the IWC bases
its historic estimates on unconfirmed whaling records
dating back to the mid-1800s.

"It
is well known that hunting dramatically reduced all
baleen whale populations, yet reliable estimates of
former whale abundances are elusive," wrote
Palumbi and Harvard graduate student Joe Roman, lead
author of the study. "Whaling logbooks provide
clues, but may be incomplete, intentionally
underreported or fail to consider hunting loss."

Genetics
surprise

To
assess the accuracy of historic whaling records,
Roman and Palumbi turned to the science of population
genetics.

"Our
study marks the first attempt to use genetics rather
than whaling records to confirm the number of whales
that used to exist," said Palumbi, whose lab is
based at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station. "The
genetics of populations has within it information
about the past. If you can read the amount of genetic
variation -- the difference in DNA from one
individual whale to another -- and calibrate that,
then you can estimate the historic size of the
population."

In their
study, Roman and Palumbi focused on the genetics of
humpback, fin and minke whales -- three species
decimated in the mid-19th and early-20th centuries by
the demand for whale oil (for lamps, candles, soaps
and perfumes), baleen (for whips, corsets and other
devices) and meat. Although humpbacks, fins and
minkes are found in many oceans, the researchers
restricted their DNA analysis to the North Atlantic
-- with surprising results.

"The
genetics we've done of whales in the North Atlantic
says that, before whaling, there were a total of
800,000 to 900,000 humpback, fin and minke whales --
far greater numbers than anybody ever thought,"
Palumbi said.

Take
humpback whales, for example. According to the IWC,
the current population of North Atlantic humpbacks is
about 10,000, compared to its historic high of 20,000
-- a figure based on old whaling records. But after
comparing DNA samples from 188 humpbacks, Roman and
Palumbi concluded that the historic population in the
North Atlantic may have been 10 times greater than
the IWC estimate.

"A
small population tends to weed out all of its genetic
differences through inbreeding," Palumbi
observed. "A large population, by contrast,
should have a lot more genetic variation. Our study
shows that humpback whales today actually have about
10 times more genetic variation than would be
expected from the whaling logbook estimates. That
tells us that, sometime in the past, the population
of humpbacks was pretty big -- and in fact our
calculation for the North Atlantic suggests that the
historic size of that population was about 240,000
animals."

Using
these results, Palumbi estimated that the worldwide
humpback population could have been as high as 1.5
million -- more than 10 times the IWC's global
historical estimate of 100,000. Exactly when the
population reached that size will have to be
determined in future genetic expeditions, he added:
"We know from the genetics that there were many,
many humpback whales in the ocean, but when those
numbers started to drop is something we haven't been
able to pinpoint yet."

Palumbi
pointed out that, although the humpback population
today is small because of whaling, "the genetic
signal persists in that population for a long time,
so we're really reading the past signal in the
current population. And that past signal is far
higher than it should be if there were only 20,000
whales in the North Atlantic."

An
analysis of fin whale DNA yielded similar results.
According to historic whaling records, about 40,000
fin whales once inhabited the North Atlantic. Current
IWC estimates place today's fin whale population at
56,000, which would be an all-time high. But a
genetic comparison of 235 fin whales by Roman and
Palumbi revealed that the actual pre-whaling
population was probably about 360,000 -- again,
roughly 10 times higher than the IWC's historical
estimate.

"Somehow
we have to reconcile those numbers," Palumbi
added. "That's going to require going back and
looking at the whaling records. Are they complete?
Have there ever been large hunts of whales that
weren't recorded? These are things that we have to
find out."

Conservation
conundrum

For
Palumbi, reconciling those numbers is not an esoteric
pursuit but rather an essential component of whale
conservation for the 21st century. "Several
countries would like to re-start commercial
whaling," he noted. "The question is, when
is a population large enough to allow whaling to
begin? That depends upon how many whales there used
to be before whaling wiped them out."

In 1986,
the IWC declared a worldwide moratorium on commercial
whaling -- a position respected by all 51 IWC
member-nations except Norway, which openly permits
the annual sale and slaughter of about 550 North
Atlantic minke whales, and Japan, which allows
certain species in Antarctica and the North Pacific
to be harvested for "scientific purposes."
Under IWC guidelines, a majority of members could
lift the moratorium and allow other countries to hunt
whales in regions where the population has reached 54
percent of its original carrying capacity.

"This
is a real conundrum," Palumbi said.
"Humpback whales, for example, were thought to
have numbered about 20,000 in the North Atlantic, and
we're up to about 10,000 now, so at that rate, the
IWC could allow countries to start killing humpbacks
within the next decade. But if the historic
population was really 240,000, as the genetics
suggests, then we wouldn't be able to start whaling
for another 70 to 100 years."

Conservationists
also are concerned about the fate of minke whales,
whose meat is prized in Norway, Japan and elsewhere.
In their Science report, Roman and Palumbi
analyzed DNA samples from 87 minke whales and
concluded that the pre-whaling North Atlantic minke
population was at least 265,000 -- roughly twice the
number of minkes that inhabit the North Atlantic
today, according to the IWC.

Phantom
knowledge

"In
light of our findings," Roman and Palumbi
concluded, "current populations of humpback or
fin whales are far from harvestable. Minke whales are
closer to genetically defined population limits, and
hunting decisions regarding them must be based on
other data."

Unfortunately,
Palumbi added, much of the scientific data on the
state of the oceans -- past and present -- has proved
incorrect: "We forgot how many whales there
were, or we never really knew. We could call this
presumption of information 'phantom knowledge.'"

Many
ocean ecosystems are in serious decline, he noted,
pointing to a well-publicized study in the May 15
issue of the journal Nature, which found that
approximately 90 percent the oceans' stocks of tuna,
cod and other large predatory fish have been depleted
by commercial fishing. Whales are also large
predators, and their demise has had a significant
impact on ocean ecosystems, observed marine biologist
Boris Worm, co-author of the Nature study.

"One
of the few collective actions of mankind was to save
the great whales from extinction through a worldwide
ban on commercial whaling," said Worm, a
researcher with the Institute of Marine Sciences at
Kiel University in Germany. "This new paper by
Roman and Palumbi shows us that, despite recent
population increases, we are still far away from our
goal of allowing whales to recover fully from
relentless exploitation."

The loss
of more than 800,000 humpback, fin and minke whales
in the North Atlantic is likely to have altered the
entire web of life in that ocean, added James Estes,
a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey
and adjunct professor of biology at the University of
California-Santa Cruz: "Clearly, the
disappearance of the great whale was not an isolated
event."

Not only
are baleen whales major consumers of krill and small
fish, he explained, but when they die, their massive
carcasses sink to the bottom and provide vital
nutrition for a wide variety of creatures on the sea
floor. For example, an adult humpback can reach 50
feet in length and weigh up to 40 tons. Multiply that
by 240,000 whales, and the impact of the loss becomes
apparent.

"Sharks
and killer whales are known to prey upon humpback
whales, and their demise likely had a big effect on
those predators as well," Estes noted. "So
the implications of the Roman-Palumbi study for ocean
conservation are startling. It could entirely
redefine our recovery criteria for whales."

Watching
versus whaling

Instead
of catering to commercial whaling interests, a number
of scientists and policymakers have urged the IWC to
encourage the development of commercial whale
watching -- an industry that generates more than $1
billion in annual revenues worldwide, according to a
June 2003 report by the conservation group WWF (World
Wildlife Fund).

"The
IWC is a whaling organization. It's not a
conservation organization, although the last IWC
session did vote to include a new committee on
conservation -- a major step for them. But the IWC's
main goal is to re-start whaling as soon as whale
populations have come back to levels it considers
safe," Palumbi observed.

"Our
conception of how the oceans and their ecosystems
were put together probably needs to change, and
genetics is one of the new tools that allows us to do
that. We are the stewards of these magnificent
creatures, and knowing something about their history
is crucial in order to bring their populations
back."

The Science
study was supported by a Mia J. Tegner Memorial
Research Grant in Marine Environmental History and
Historical Marine Ecology from the Marine
Conservation Biology Institute; the National Science
Foundation; and the Pew Charitable Trusts.